I have a simple message to the Senate Democrats. Fuck you Senate Democrats and fuck you Reid.
In Act Of Collective Insanity, Senate Democrats Don’t Collectively Back Reconciliation Sidecar
Well this is just a remarkably stupid move from Senate Democrats. After ruining health care reform and costing themselves a seat, they refuse to promise to start working on a reconciliation sidecar measure that might just make their bill passable in the House. From Politico:
Part of the negotiations center on whether Reid can provide an ironclad guarantee that the Senate will not leave the House in the lurch, aides said. If the House agrees to pass the Senate bill with a companion measure — or a "cleanup" bill — to make fixes, they want to know that the Senate will indeed pass it, too.
There was some talk among Senate leadership on Thursday of putting together a letter signed by 51 Democratic senators pledging to pass a cleanup bill if the House would pass the Senate bill. But that effort fizzled when support for it didn’t materialize, insiders said.
"The Senate moderates’ viewpoint is, ‘We passed our bill. We’re not going to spend three weeks on some other bill,’" said a Democratic lobbyist who represents clients pushing for reform.
Now this is an act of egotism beyond description, and a result of Democrats treating the 60-vote myth as sacred while letting every member of the caucus act like a spoiled five-year-old. The Senate Democrats are effectively saying that on a major piece of legislation, the House of Representatives should have absolutely no say.
The insanity of this position is that there are not 218 votes in the House to pass the current Senate bill. There is zero reason to believe that there will be any more votes in a few days or weeks. So, any other route to passing health care reform also requires starting over in the Senate. Either with a new reconciliation-only bill (a good strategy that could create a good bill), or a dramatically scaled-down bill that might get Republican support (a comical pipe dream that is doomed to fail). Both of these ideas would take just as long, or probably much longer, than a reconciliation sidecar.
Read more: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/...
There’s a real danger Democrats will take away the wrong lesson from their loss of the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts this week. Yes, independents broke in big numbers for Republican Scott Brown. But a major reason that Democrat Martha Coakley lost is that Democrats stayed home in droves — just as they did in Virginia and New Jersey last fall, when Democrats lost governors’ seats in states won in 2008 by President Barack Obama.
In three major races in the last 90 days, key traditionally Democratic constituencies failed to vote. One inescapable conclusion for Democrats should be that, unless they figure out how to engage, inspire and turn out their base, they will continue to lose ground gained over the past several elections. And the best way to keep these core supporters fired up and turning up on Election Day is to deliver on the change agenda promised in the 2008 presidential election.
On Tuesday, Coakley received close to 850,000 fewer votes than Obama did in 2008.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
If you don't pass a reconciliation sidecar to give the House a bill they can pass (preferably with a Public Option), there's no way in hell I'm ever voting for a democrat again. I'll be joining the close to 1 million voters who voted for Obama but stayed home two days ago because they hated the pussies that the Senate democrats have become. And this is just one state out of 50. Lets see you guys win a single election when 50 million liberals stay home this November.